


New Growth

by somethingsomething



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Domestic Fluff, Multi, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 16:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5170547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingsomething/pseuds/somethingsomething
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“WHY are there PLANTS all over the KITCHEN,” Chuck yells from upstairs.</p><p>Raleigh looks up from the tiny cherry tree he’s pruning in the light of one of the basement windows.  “This is just a guess, but I think your boyfriend is home,” he says to Mako.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Growth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Confabulatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confabulatrix/gifts).



> Happy Belated Birthday, Esteé!

The human body, in all reality, contains very little energy. It makes a lot, but it loses a lot, and uses more. It makes a poor donor when it comes right down to it. The energy of one human body is enough to give life to something of equal size (in a pinch) or smaller (in ideal situations).

Chuck Hansen learned this the hard way. Mako Mori does her best to cheat this system.

 

All told, Mako’s favorite thing about living with Raleigh after the war is all of the life and light. Chuck complains about the villagers and their children and the plants that grow everywhere and the pollen that makes him sneeze when all he wants to do is reanimate dead rats. Mako, though, has seen him inhale deeply in the middle of cooking vegetables for dinner and savor the tea she sets in front of him. She’s also seen the way Chuck smiles at the children, and the sweets he sneaks them when he thinks she and Raleigh aren’t looking.

Raleigh, for his part, just gives Mako a smug look when Chuck can’t see him. Even so:

“WHY are there PLANTS all over the KITCHEN,” Chuck yells from upstairs.

Raleigh looks up from the tiny cherry tree he’s pruning in the light of one of the basement windows. “This is just a guess, but I think your boyfriend is home,” he says to Mako.

She looks up from her dissections of newts and frogs and bats. “Technically, he’s your boyfriend, too.”

Raleigh pretends to make a face of annoyance. “According to Chuck, not when there are plants around.”

Mako wrinkles her nose. “Still mad about the leg?”

Raleigh makes a face and goes back to the cherry tree. “Still mad about the leg. I mean, you can’t even tell its pine anymore, I glamoured it to look like a real leg most of the time. It even smells exactly like his aftershave, I have no idea what he keeps complaining about.”

“RALEIGH,” Chuck yells, “YOUR FRANKEN-PINE IS LEAKING SAP ONTO WHATEVER PLANTS YOU HAVE IN WHAT USED TO BE THE KITCHEN.”

Mako giggles and Raleigh sighs. “You know what, I don’t even care if it sends the wrong message if I take the pruning shears up with me,” he says.

 

When Stacker Pentecost finds Raleigh Becket working the Wall of Life (it has no charms, no spells, not even pentagrams drawn into the bricks so it’s a bit of a misnomer) to defend against the Kaiju, he hasn’t practiced magic in five years and four months. Some days, he very nearly believes his own lies about not being a greenmage.

Still, Raleigh comes back with Stacker to fight and meets Mako Mori along the way. His magic likes her, even more than Raleigh does, going so far as to make her clothes a little warmer when Raleigh isn’t paying attention (she’s wearing cotton; even dead plants like green magic).

Raleigh also tells Mako that in battle, you have to make decisions, and then you have to live with them.

With Chuck and her _sensei_ in danger of dying on the battlefield, Mako makes one and prays for the best.

 

“You know, we could collect the sap and make into syrup,” Raleigh says when he tops the basement stairs into the kitchen. “And anyway, it just needs to grow to maturity, and then Mako can start changing it back into a real leg.”

Chuck, trying to maneuver hands too-full of groceries from their bags to cabinets without tramping plants, just glowers.

Raleigh sighs. “Come here,” he says, sitting down on a miraculously clear seat at the kitchen table. Chuck keeps glowering as he sits across from Raleigh and props his leg on Raleigh’s lap. The glamour falls away and gnarled pine bark with a sticky run of sap appears. Tiny boughs stick out here and there.

“Stop trying to break the new growth off the side unless you’re going to heal it closed. The bark is skin–”

“And the sap is blood, yeah, yeah I got it, Becket,” Chuck says.

Raleigh rolls his eyes and holds his hand over where the broken-off bough used to be. He takes the pruning shears and starts on the rest of the nubs. “Look, I know it’s hard, but a few more months and the pine will be strong enough for Mako to transmutate it.”

Chuck sighs after a long moment. “Yeah, I know,” he says, quiet.

 

Mako is not a healer. Neither is Raleigh. Mako did, however, spend several years with Stacker encouraging her to study any kind of magic other than black no matter how much she promised to never summon spirits. (Chuck tried once; Mako was thoroughly unimpressed and didn’t see the point in making someone else do your work for you.)

Mako, therefore, knows the limitations of different kinds of magic and what they’ll do for her. She also knows, from just a few short weeks, Raleigh’s limitations and what he’ll do for her.

 

Mako comes up from the basement to see Raleigh encouraging the pine tree to heal over the jagged edges from cutting away new growth. Chuck stares at the floor. He looks at her when he hears her footsteps, and he almost smiles. She crosses to him and cups his cheek in her hand.

“Soon,” she says, and Chuck nods. His stubble scrapes against her palm.

“And if it doesn’t work, I promise to grow you something with smoother bark, like eucalyptus. It’ll make you feel at home,” Raleigh says.

Chuck kicks Raleigh in the stomach and doesn’t try very hard to miss his crotch. Mako twists Chuck’s ear since Raleigh is too busy wheezing.

“Behave, boys,” she says.

Chuck gives her look that says he is very much prepared to revert back to pre-school age problem-solving. “I was! He started it!”

Mako rolls her eyes.

 

“You want me to _what_?” Raleigh asks. Mako almost wants to strangle him because _they don’t have time for this_.

 _More control, Miss Mori_. She takes a deep breath. “I want you to grow something that will keep his heart beating.”

Raleigh looks close to calling her crazy or telling her no or maybe both, and Mako is not so prideful that she won’t beg for this. “Okay,” he says instead, “Okay. Open his shirt collar.”

Mako almost thanks him, but they don’t have time. She pulls away _sensei’s_ shirt collar and pulls out a knife from her pocket.

“I think cutting between his ribs will work,” Raleigh says. Mako does it. Blood wells up thick and sluggish. Mako hasn’t felt this terrified in a long time. Then Raleigh’s hands are hovering over _sensei’s_ skin and tendrils are snaking their way into _sensei_ where Mako can’t see. The tendrils grow thicker, and a mass of them start to clot the cut and snake their way up to his shoulder, where they’ll see the sun.

“Okay,” Raleigh says. He looks a little paler than usual. “If it’s going to work, that’ll do it.”

Mako presses her ear to _sensei’s_ chest. She can’t be sure, but his heart sounds stronger.

“Thank you,” she says to Raleigh. He nods, and his smile is the second best thing she’s seen all day. (Later, _sensei_ will open his eyes, and the Kaiju’s defeat will become the second best thing she’s seen all day. Raleigh is happy to claim third best.)

 

A week after transmutating Chuck’s pine leg into a real one (Raleigh had to threaten him with a sleeping draught twice, and Chuck understandably went through an entire box of tissues once it was over), Mako sits on the couch in Herc and Stacker’s living room. Herc has gone out to run errands, so it’s just her, _sensei_ and a pot of tea. Sensei’s heart beats strong and steady under her palm.

“You’re going to do wonderfully,” _sensei_ says. Mako nods and sets her fingertips above the mass of vines Raleigh grew into _sensei’s_ heart.

Life cannot be created out of nothing; energy has to come from somewhere. Most like to summon spirits or draw pentagrams with offerings in the corners. In a pinch, humans can be traded for someone else’s life (it is generally regarded that there is no coming back from that path). Mako had Raleigh and little time.

When _sensei’s_ heart continues to beat after Mako has changed the vines back into heart and blood and skin and muscle, she looks over her choices and sends thanks that they’ll be easy ones to live with.


End file.
